Director Mohammad Rasoulof was sentenced to imprisonment in Iran for his film The Seed of the Sacred Fig. The Iranian authorities ordered the destruction of the work, and in addition to incarceration, the director was publicly sentenced to flogging. Rasoulof fled to a European country and eventually managed to present his project at the Cannes Film Festival.

The story unfolds against the backdrop of the Iranian protests triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini. The main character, Iman, is a judicial investigator whose job involves sentencing "dissidents" to death. He leads an exemplary family life, following a seemingly "European" lifestyle with his loving wife and two daughters, who previously appeared unquestioning of their father's profession. However, as political unrest escalates, their attitudes gradually shift—his daughters begin to openly defy him, and even his compliant wife starts posing uncomfortable questions. Iman's world completely collapses when his officially registered service weapon mysteriously disappears from his home, drawing the attention and suspicion of his superiors. The situation worsens when Iman's address is leaked online, leaving him vulnerable to protestors who might invade his home at any moment.

On the surface, the film presents a therapeutic, contemporary story of fathers and children, cloaked in a form that drifts between semi-parable and semi-news reportage. Beneath this narrative lies a tangle of deeper themes — an archetypal battle against ancient evil, a modern perception of religion captured in the unshakable faith of its devotees, convinced that Allah must be unmoved by the rapid shifts of the secular world.
The narrative is loosely divided into two parts: one portraying the "domestic world" amid rising political tension, and the other — the realm of exile — where the clash of ideologies and generational discord erupt simultaneously. The transition between these spheres is portrayed as a journey through the sun-scorched suburbs of Tehran, darkened by a sense of imagined persecution.

A tragic story of familial ties between a religious fanatic and someone perhaps sincerely, perhaps inevitably absorbed into a system of hatred and deception, ends — as it must — in death. Yet this death is not a result of violence or retribution, but rather surrendered to a natural element: the loose, crumbling soil beneath the protagonist’s feet — symbolizing, most likely, the fragile foundation of a political system built on evil.